FROM URGENCY TO AGENCY – Sustainability at the Heart of Learning

Sustainability Workshop 26th & 27th November 2021

The UN has called ‘Code Red for Humanity’ in its most recent IPCC report. How do we as educators mitigate the climate anxiety our students may experience (and staff, we might add) and use it as an opportunity to forge local actions? In this workshop we base ourselves on the conviction that schools are capable of, and obligated to, play an important role in mitigating Climate Change.

In our view, schools should reinvent themselves to become learning communities that go beyond preparing for the future; instead they should help shape that future, by allowing students and educators to prototype solutions for today’s challenges. By allowing students to actively engage with the local impacts of Climate Change, they could learn about the SDGs, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, collaboration, etc - all skills which will serve them well in their further lives. In that way, sustainability can become a core driver of education, very much in line with IBO’s vision about student agency. It will allow for learning to be challenge-based, relevant, local and utterly engaging. It will give students a voice and allow them to make necessary changes in their school environment, at home and beyond.